Trump’s Neo-Nazi “Fake News” tactic is modeled on the “lugenpresse” claims of WWII Germany. The Nazis adopted the term to promote their propaganda against the Jewish, communist, and later the foreign press. Any other free press that was not the voice of the Nazi Party was denounced as “false” and “biased.”
With this in mind, let’s tell our Alt-Right “so-called President” that he does not have the power to dictate what the free press can or cannot publish; let’s embrace the role of an independent press as an integral and essential part of a functioning democracy.
If the President wants better opinions of himself expressed in the media, he needs to start making policies that actually benefit us as a nation, and not just his wealthy campaign donors. Here are a few pointers:
- Start embracing the media, instead of shouting them down. The press can be a very powerful political ally when they are given the respect they deserve (and when you are not constantly criticizing them for offering new objectivity or a different perspective).
- Start building bridges, not walls. Walls indicate general paranoia and a sense of cultural superiority. As a nation of immigrants, the building of a wall is the height of hypocrisy, and is considered completely impractical by many experts. Moreover, targeting/restricting travel between seven specific nations (ALL of which are primarily Muslim, coincidentally!) will only serve to create more enemies in a region where we need more allies. Anyone can build a wall, but building friendships requires taking a much broader world view and applying patience and diplomatic skills, skills that our current president is sorely lacking.
- Learn the difference between facts and alternative facts. (A real challenge for our current Liar-in Chief, I know…). It seems everyone in the world has caught on except for the man in the Oval Office. His lies have become increasingly frequent and apparent, thanks, mostly, to the courage of our free press to research and investigate.
- Start saving Education, Social Security, Affordable Health Care, and Consumer/Environmental Protections, rather than decimating them. When taxpayers put their hard-earned money into these government programs, they expect you to improve/expand them by appointing the best and brightest to manage these agencies. Trump’s obvious cronies have failed almost every test of intellectual competence and genuine engagement. His choice of Cabinet members and agency leaders indicates his lack of respect for those agencies and the “common folk” that they are designed to serve.
These four points are the “Core Values” of our democracy, which is currently struggling to maintain its integrity (in spite of a self-serving president who takes daily steps to dismantle it). Let’s make sure that these attempts to butcher our democracy fail as an increasing number of us watch, learn, and see what is actually taking place in this country.
Troy
Your naivete is touching, Ken.
Romney’s speech to his 1%er donors was the gameplan here:
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for [Obama] no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.
There’s now $2.8T sitting in Social Security’s trust fund, ready to be stolen. This money is the accrued over-taxation (via FICA payments) of the working middle class from 1983 to now, plus interest), said FICA rates were set by the Greenspan Commission of 1983 so the baby boom would pre-pay their massive retirement insurance costs as they retire (first boomer hit early retirement age in 2008 and we’re about halfway through the boomer retirement surge now, with substantially all retirees getting payments by 2026).
But for SSA to cash out these bonds, Congress has to fund their conversion into cash — and the GOP Congress has much better uses for that ~$100B/yr expense than giving it to people who think they’re “entitled” to it.
The GOP’s primary — “inner party” — rationale for 86ing PPACA is its tax rises on high earners, which help fund the subsidies poor people get to afford their health insurance premiums.
The GOP does not want to pay for poor people’s expenses. They want these people to die, self-deport, just f-off like how high-Gini societies normally operate.
>will only serve to create more enemies in a region where we need more allies
What you think the US needs and what the conservative coalition running things now needs are two different things.
Bannon’s muslim ban was an intentional f-you to the muslim world, even if it didn’t actually target the major nations that actually have all the terrorists.
Conservatives want Americans to see muslims as the enemy, partially because muslims are enemies of Israel, and conservatives (neocons and the Christian right) are in bed with Israel.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/romney-secret-video-israeli-palestinian-middle-east-peace
Bannon is even a more scary dude than the normal right-wing whackjob.
AFAICT the masterplan is chaos and unrest and instability and breaking government.
When you break something, you get to put it back the way you want.
These are dangerous times, dangerous because so many Americans have pudding for brains.